Editing Rm (Unix) (section)

=== Protection of the filesystem root ===

The <code>rm -rf /</code> command, if run by a [[superuser]], causes every file of the file system to be deleted. For safety, [[Sun Microsystems]] introduced special protection for this command in [[Solaris (operating system)|Solaris]] 10 (first released in 2005). The implementation reports that removing {{code|/}} is not allowed.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://blogs.oracle.com/jbeck/date/20041001%23rm_rf_protection|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161103124127/https://blogs.oracle.com/jbeck/date/20041001|archive-date=2016-11-03|url-status=dead|title=Meddling in the Affairs of Wizards}}</ref> Shortly thereafter, the same functionality was introduced into the [[FreeBSD]] implementation.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/commit/d6b7bd90c2776d9ccd8bb7f33a899bd213aebf85|title=The previous commit added code to rm(1) to warn about and remove any · freebsd/freebsd@d6b7bd9|website=GitHub}}</ref> The [[GNU]] version refuses to execute <code>rm -rf /</code> unless the <code>--preserve-root</code> option is included,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/rm-invocation.html|title=rm invocation (GNU Coreutils)|website=www.gnu.org}}</ref> which has been the default since version 6.4 of [[GNU Core Utilities]]. In newer systems, this [[Fail-safe|failsafe]] is always active, even without the option. To run the command, user must bypass the failsafe by adding the option <code>--no-preserve-root</code>, even if they are the superuser.